"His son said, 'Don't send him down the Taconic,'" Taylor recalled. "You could tell he was really concerned."

Taylor made sure Ferreri didn't get back in his car and led him to the toll plaza office.

Even though it was late and some 30 minutes past his own home in Chatham, Taylor agreed to drive Ferreri to his son at the Selkirk toll barrier near Albany.

His son, John Ferreri Jr., was relieved to see his father. Earlier that evening, the elder Ferreri had called his sister and said he got lost driving to Stamford, Conn., and was in Yonkers. He tried to find his way back, but wound up near the Massachusetts border at the end of Interstate 90.

"I thank God that he made it to someplace where he could get help," said John Ferreri Jr. "I'm ever so thankful to Mark Taylor. The guy is a hero. The last thing he needed — at the end of a long shift on Memorial Day weekend — is this. ... Mark had this thing dropped in his lap, and he stepped up and acted with compassion and integrity and competence."

Ferreri said the incident was the first time his father showed a major sign of dementia, and he has since taken away his car keys.

"He accepted that and he realized that this is not something he would ever want to repeat or risk repeating," Ferreri said.

Taylor dismissed the notion that he did anything special.

"I'm not a hero," he said. "It's part of my job. I'm glad he was appreciative."

Seniors are the fastest growing group of drivers in the nation, with one-quarter of all drivers expected to be older than 65 by 2025.

"It becomes all the more important — as the population of senior drivers increases — the need to observe older drivers and to intercede when it's time to hand over the keys," said Robert Sinclair, AAA New York spokesman.

Families should get seniors evaluated if they start forgetting how to travel to familiar places or they get into repeated minor accidents, Sinclair said.